The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Months

Eek! I seriously cant believe that it has been over TWO months since I last posted an update. Let's get to it, shall we? I can't believe that Kaitlin is now a year and a half old. Weren't we just celebrating her first birthday?! To say that the last couple of months have been would not be entirely accurate, but they sure have been fun. Kaitlin's personality grows and expands every day. Her likes - and dislikes - become all the more clear and she becomes all the more vocal about it. The past two months, although super fun and full of laughs, were also very challenging as Kaitlin tries to find her voice and express herself without very many words. She only has about 5-6 words that she uses consistently, but she manages to get her point across very well. One of the words that she uses most often is a full, confident "YEAH". She only means to say "yes" about half the time that she actually says "yeah", but it's hilarious just the same.

"Kaitlin, do you want to go outside?"

"YEAH"

"Kaitlin, do you smell like dirty socks?"

"YEAH"

Its a fun game, really!

And - I am excited to announce - after eighteen loooonnngggg months Kaitlin is finally saying "Mama". Hooray!! And she says it when pointing to me or when she wants to tell me something. You have no idea how happy this makes me! She still says "Dada" all day long but I am happy to have a few "mama's" thrown in there too.

Getting her to eat is one area that is not fun at all. She has reverted to the standard beige toddler diet and it is incredibly frustrating for me, she doesn't seem to mind at all! She won't eat anything if it is any color other than white, beige, yellow or sometimes orange. Except for pouches. She will only eat green or yellow pouches. But only certain green and yellow ones, not just any one you give her. She is addicted to carbs, milk/cheese and eats mostly "snack" type foods rather than actual meals. She will take two bites of her meal and then push away her plate and exclaim, "UP!" (which means she actually wants to get down). It seems like I am always trying to push, encourage or trick her into eating more. Somehow she is getting enough calories though because she jumped back up to the 15% at her 18 month doctors appt for weight (she dipped down to 5% at her 15 mo check up). So the doctor encouraged me to "keep doing what I'm doing" to get her to eat. ACK! Doesn't she know how exhausting that is??

Hands down the best thing about the past two months is watching Kaitlin's little personality grow and flourish more and more each day. She is an adrenaline junky already - demanding us to push her higher on the swings and throw her on the bed more and more (which makes for a very nervous mommy). She is starting to learn when she is being funny and will try over and over again to get us to laugh and do something funny. She does a happy dance and she is as loving as ever to all of her stuffed animals and dolls. And now in addition to giving the sweetest kisses ever, she now gives the best hugs in the world. Real hugs where she holds you tight and buries her head into your neck. Oh how I love all of those sweet hugs!!

The Sixteenth Month

"Head, shoulders, knees and toes (knees and toes)"

That's right - Kaitlin can now find her head, toes, nose, ears, belly button and teeth. Well, most times she can. Sometimes she gets a little confused and keeps pointing to her nose when you ask her where other things are. She can also find your nose (and her bears nose, and monkeys nose, and dolls nose, and...) and she LOVES to find Mommy's belly button. Usually when we are out in public. That's cool.

(I swear I didn't know that she was wearing the same outfit in her fifteen month update. She does have more than one onesie, I promise.)

Kaitlin is turning into a very loving child and showers every stuffed animal, book and kid in sight with a million kisses and hugs. Where she used to give slobbery, open mouth kisses she now makes a kissing noise with her mouth and puckers her little lips up. She is in love with all of her stuffed animals and dolls and loves to have them all around her (either on the couch or in her crib or all over the floor). She'll go to each one, touch them on the head and give them a kiss before moving on to the next one. And dogs. Ohhh this girls love for dogs knows no boundaries. On the opposite end of the spectrum she has also turned into a shrieking, crying, screaming mess if she has to do something she doesn't want to or if you try and stop her from doing something she wants to do. Very Jekyll and Hyde over here.

Kaitlin started school this month and it has been a bit of a roller coaster. I wrote about her first day here and luckily things have drastically improved since then. The first few weeks were awful but by the fourth week she wasn't crying when I dropped her off, and was only a little upset once I came to pick her up. This past week was our best yet - she even got EXCITED as we were walking into school and I was telling her about all the fun things she was going to do (buggy ride, playing with balls - story time!!) and she didn't cry one tear when I picked her up. Success!! Hopefully it continues ;)

We are still on the teething road from hell (I say that but compared to other kids it probably isn't that bad). She has one new molar and I can see two more canines just below the gums. I am ready for teething to be over!

And can we talk about toddler eating habits please? I mean....what is the deal?! Loving a food one day, hating it the next. Acting like you are trying to give them rat poison when really it's some lovely strawberries. Kaitlin has even begun rejecting POUCHES which means she is getting barely any fruits and vegetables in her diet at all. I never thought that I would practically have to BEG my child to eat a pouch. But that is what it has come to folks. And most times she gives it a weary eye and then walks away. As of right now the only things she will eat are: quesadillas (with just cheese, or shredded yellow squash/zucchini if she can't tell it's in there), ravioli, pasta with tomato sauce, eggs (sometimes), oatmeal (sometimes), pancakes (sometimes), freeze dried strawberries (?!?!), dried apples, cheese and milk. I think that about covers it. She has not eaten a single, WHOLE piece of fruit since the beginning of August when we were up in NY. I think the most aggravating part of it is that JUST when you think you have a "safe" food that they will consistently eat they turn around and act like you are the worst person in the world to even think about offering it to them to eat. And you wonder why I drink ;)

Kaitlin has added a couple new "words" to her repertoire, which is an exciting development. She can now say - dada, yes, ah-ah (monkey noise), ar-ra-ra (dog noise), vrrmm (car noise), uh-oh, ow (for "wow"). All very exciting. She is also getting better at imitating words that you ask her to say. For instance I said to her, "Can you say 'UP'?" and she looked at me for a minute and said, "Uh". She is practically a genius ;)

We have quite the book worm on our hands too. She loves, LOVES her books. We read them morning, noon and night. She reads them on the floor, on the couch, on the chair. She would read them in the bathtub if we let her. She has about 20 favrotie books at the moment and we ready them all 49583459 times a day. We probably spend a solid 50% of our day reading books. Although it's gotten to the point where she has one or two favorite pages in each book. Often times she doesn't even want me to read the story, she just flips to the page that she likes and gives it a kiss or makes a happy face. If I try to read it she waves her arm and says, "SSHHHHH". Her teachers said that she loves to read books when she's in school too. I better get this kid to the library!

She is a running, walking, climbing (she has to climb into EVERY box she sees) ball full of energy. She's happy, emotional and energetic crazy head full of love, kisses and hugs. She can really drive me crazy but then manages to erase all of that craziness with one sweet look, one kiss out of the blue or one big, goofy smile.